New Delhi, March 09: Terming the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC) III anti-missile system as "outdated", top DRDO scientist V K Saraswat said the Indian Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) shield was better than the American system.
"PAC III is an outdated system. Our Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile is 30 percent superior in terms of range and capability. AAD intercepts at much higher ranges and altitudes compared to PAC III as it has only 15km range for BMD," he told a press conference on the successful test of BMD system on March 6.
On the role of foreign countries in the Air Defence (AD) programme, Saraswat said Russia, Israel and France have provided assistance in areas where DRDO needed help for "bridging technology gap and accelerating technology development."
Russia has helped India develop the new Radio Frequency Seeker for the interceptor missile, Israel provided help in developing the 'Swordfish' long-range tracking radar and the French have given the Fire Control System for the BMD.
Saraswat said the new warhead weighed only around 30 kg but was able to generate the impact that a 150 kg omni-directional warhead could make.
He said the new guidance system in the missile allowed it to tackle the maneuvers of enemy's incoming missile and could be used against the Russian Topol M class of missiles, which move in a zig-zag manner.
The DRDO official also said the system was "fully automated" and did not require human intervention in activating it in case of an attack by ballistic missiles.
"Under the present system, the interceptor missiles are on 'Hot Stand-by mode' and can take-off within 120 seconds of the detection of the incoming missile by the tracking radars," he said.
Saraswat also said the current missile is 30 per cent more powerful than the missile used in the December 2006 test of the endo-atmospheric interceptor.
He said during the flight of the interceptor missile towards the ballistic missile, the interceptor is constantly updated about the position of its target by the ground-based radars.
During a war, unlike the demonstration phase, a volley of interceptor missiles would be launched against enemy ballistic missiles to improve the hit probability, he said.
Commenting on the possibility of the interceptor being jammed by enemy missiles, Saraswat said with the missile having only one link with the ground, it was "very difficult" to jam it as various counter measures were in place to stop such an effort.
He said work on developing a new interceptor 'PDV' for phase-I programme was also going on.
The official said to tackle missiles with a striking range of over 6,000 km, hypersonic interceptor missiles will have to be developed for the phase 2 of the air defence programme.
"Phase 2 interceptors will have speeds of 6-7 Mach and they will be hypersonic. Missiles will have lesser time to intercept and our guidance systems have to be far more energetic and quick responsive," he said.
In the previous two trials, DRDO had successfully tested the BMD system in November 2006 outside the atmosphere at a 48-km altitude and inside atmosphere at an altitude of 15-km in December 2007.
DRDO has developed a two-tier system with the PAD missiles intercepting ballistic missiles at altitudes between 50-80 km and the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile destroying them at heights between 15-30 km.
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